


The Scars That Words Have Carved

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnesia, Angst, Brief instance of a homophobic slur, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-05 00:42:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14605443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: “Forgive me for asking, Peeks,” Sharpy says, slowly. “But did you just kiss our illustrious captain, here?”“Um.” Patrick’s not sure what this captain business is about, but: “Yes?”Jonny’s still staring at him like he’s grown four or five extra heads, and, okay. Patrick definitely read this wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hildejohanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hildejohanne/gifts).



> For the excellent Hilde, who bid on me in the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction and picked this premise out of my many suggestions! If you like this story, she gets the credit for making it happen, and if you don’t, it’s on me. :D
> 
> Any 1988 names-on-wrist story owes a debt to the most wonderful aohatsu, who also cheered me on for this one. Many thanks, my dear!
> 
> Set in the fall of 2013, but the schedule’s a bit handwavy. Title from the Vienna Teng's gorgeous song [Gravity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ULXgJ18xuY).
> 
> [Tumblr](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/)!

Patrick wakes up somewhere that smells like old beer. He’s on the floor, some kind of damp cement, and there are boxes and empty flats around him. Like he’s in a storeroom. He was at a bar, he guesses? He—

He doesn’t remember.

Huh. That’s weird.

He takes a deep breath to clear his head. He doesn’t think he’s ever been in this room before. The last place he remembers being is—

Nowhere.

Oh shit. He doesn’t remember _anything_.

Okay. Okay, he’s not going to freak out about this. Inventory.

He turns his head a little, and the motion sends a sharp pain through his temple. When he touches his fingers to it, he feels a lump.

That probably explains the memory loss. There’s a little voice at the back of his head wanting to make a big deal out of it— _memory loss can mean a concussion, concussions are bad, they keep you from_ —but it’s not quite finishing its thought, so he pushes it down.

His name is Patrick. He knows that much. He feels like there’s a last name there, too, just a little out of reach. He’s wearing clothes. A blue button-down and jeans, nice but not tight. They feel like normal going-out clothes. He pats his pockets down and doesn’t find anything: no phone and no wallet, which is just fucking great. Something catches his eye, though: a light, from just under a pallet of boxes.

The light goes out before he can get to it, but he fishes around and eventually he lays his hand on it: a phone, the screen lightly spiderwebbed with cracks, that lights up again when he pushes the button. There’s a text on it: _wtf ru,_ from someone named Tazer.

Patrick doesn’t remember anyone named Tazer. Then again, he doesn’t remember anything. It could be his phone. The background is some kind of logo: an Indian head with feathers in the hair. A sports team, maybe? Is Patrick a fan of sports?

His finger knows how to press the home button and how to swipe across to unlock the phone. But then a keypad comes up for him to put in a passcode, and shit.

He closes his eyes and tries not to think. His hands know how to operate the phone, so maybe if he just….

He fumbles at it for a minute, but when he opens his eyes, the phone is telling him to try again. So much for that.

Well, he doesn’t need to use the phone. That’s fine. This is a bar or a club, probably—he can feel music through the floor—and he’s here with someone named Tazer. Patrick just needs to go out and find whoever he’s with. Or rather, let them find him.

He’s just about to get to his feet when he notices the fuzzy band around his wrist. A name cover.

He goes for it right away. This is actual info, not like a phone screen background. It’s weird that he has it, actually: it’s one of those hard-core ones, the ones that aren’t supposed to slip even if you’re caught in a rockslide or whatever. Patrick has no idea why he’d need something this intense. Maybe he doesn’t want to meet his person? Or he already met them and it went wrong somehow?

He pulls it off anyway, and the skin underneath is pale compared to the rest of his arm. In the middle of the space, black against the white of his skin, is the name Jonny.

Patrick feels weirdly better, seeing it. It’s probably not going to be helpful to him—he doesn’t know—but it’s still reassuring: he might not know who he is, but somewhere out there is a Jonny who does. Or will.

He puts the wrist cover back on and gets up. His head aches a little, but it’s not bad enough to keep him from walking. He shoves his phone in his pocket and goes to the door.

The corridor outside isn’t any more familiar than the storeroom. It’s loud, though, voices and heavy music, which makes Patrick think he was right about it being a bar or club or something. He turns toward the sound and hopes that whoever he came with is really proactive.

It goes better than he could have hoped. He’s two steps into the bar area when someone calls out, “Hey, Kaner,” and gets right up in his space. “We were wondering where you were,” the guy says, while Patrick’s trying to figure out if he’s Kaner or what. This guy is taller than Patrick, widow’s peak, scruffy facial hair. “I think Tazer was about to organize a search party.”

Tazer again. He must be one of the other people Patrick’s with. Patrick wonders how well he knows them, how long he can fake it in front of them. 

The widow’s-peak guy is herding Patrick toward a table. There are a bunch of other guys there—all around Patrick’s age, all kind of big, built. He doesn’t recognize any of them.

One of them looks up as they approach, and Patrick sees that he’s really good-looking, the kind of guy who belongs in a shampoo commercial. “The prodigal peekaboo returns,” he says, which makes no sense, and he elbows the guy next to him. “Hey. Jonny.”

That makes Patrick pay attention. Jonny looks up, and—well. Patrick’s been telling himself that it’s probably a coincidence, that Jonny isn’t an uncommon name, and why would he have a wrist cover on if he’d met his person? But as soon as Jonny looks up, Patrick knows. He _knows._

A thrill runs through him, this weird mix of comfort and heat—a sense of familiarity and belonging that nothing else has given him since he woke up. He may not remember his last name, he may not remember who these other people are, but he knows. This is his Jonny.

He can’t help the way his face breaks out into a smile, even though Jonny’s scowling at him. “Where the fuck were you?” he asks. “It’s been, like, an hour.”

“Sorry,” Patrick says. He tries to calculate: even if he covers the memory thing, he’s going to have to address the fact that he doesn’t have a wallet at some point, like when the evening ends and he has literally nowhere to go, so. Might as well.

“Um,” he says. “I think I was robbed.”

That makes everyone look up. “What?” Jonny says, voice going sharp. “What happened?”

“Well, my wallet’s missing,” Patrick says.

Those must be magic words, because everyone calms down. “Fucker, you probably just left it hanging out of your pocket again,” Jonny says, and Patrick frowns. Wants to say he didn’t do that, wouldn’t do that, except how would he know?

“No,” he says. “I got sort of—pushed down. I think. In the back hallway.”

That gets a reaction: “Shit,” someone says next to him, and Jonny jerks like he’s going to stand up, even though the table’s in the way.

“Back there?” Jonny says. “Who?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Well, he’s not gonna be there now.”

“But—”

“Toes. Chill,” the shampoo-commercial one says, like that’s Jonny’s name. “We should probably tell the staff.”

“Good idea,” Jonny says, standing up without regard for the table and the people who get jostled. Shampoo-Commercial looks long-suffering but lets Jonny get out past him.

Jonny heads to the bar, and Shampoo-Commercial catches Patrick’s eye. There’s a look on his face like he’s inviting Patrick into a joke, so Patrick make a weary face, even though he thinks maybe he likes the way Jonny’s charging to his defense. He doesn’t hate the idea that they have a relationship like that.

With Jonny gone, Patrick slides in next to Shampoo-Commercial and takes a surreptitious look at everyone else at the table. There are five other guys, including Widow’s Peak across from him, and none of them inspire familiarity at all. Patrick really hopes his memory comes back soon.

Jonny comes back from the bar and slides in next to Patrick—there’s not quite enough room, but that just means Jonny ends up pressed against him in a way Patrick’s not complaining about. “The bartender says no one’s reported seeing anything,” Jonny says. “They’ll call the police, though. You might have to give a statement tonight.”

“Okay,” Patrick says. That’s potentially problematic, if they ask him things like his full name. But maybe he’ll remember shit by then.

The guys around him are talking about someone’s dating problems. Patrick doesn’t do a great job of following the conversation. He doesn’t know the people they’re talking about, and anyway, Jonny is really distracting.

He just smells really good. And, like—fuck, is he ever pretty. Patrick figures he must have gotten good at dealing with it, in his pre-amnesia life, but right now it’s kind of throwing him for a loop. It’s a different kind of pretty than Shampoo-Commercial, less showy, but…better. Definitely better.

It occurs to Patrick that he doesn’t know what he himself looks like. He hopes it’s good. It would suck if Jonny didn’t feel like this when he looked at Patrick.

Jonny catches Patrick looking. “What?” he asks.

Patrick shrugs and grins—probably a stupid grin, but he can’t help it. He obviously has it so bad for this guy. “Nothing,” he says.

Jonny grins back, a little shy: he ducks his head, then looks back up. Patrick wonders if maybe this is a newish thing between them. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Jonny asks. “You’re a little…I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Patrick says, letting his smile slide toward flirty. “Do I not look good?”

It feels a little risky, smiling at Jonny like that. Patrick still doesn’t have the full picture here. But Jonny reacts right away, eyes going hot and dropping to Patrick’s mouth. “I mean,” he says, and okay, he’s definitely leaning in.

Patrick only hesitates for a moment. Then he leans in, a little lurch of heat in his gut, and meets Jonny’s mouth with his own.

He knows it’s wrong right away. Jonny jerks back like he’s been burned and stares at Patrick, wide-eyed, and—fuck. Something leaden and cold drops to the bottom of Patrick’s stomach.

“What did you—” Jonny says, eyes bulging. “Why did you—”

Fuck it all; Patrick read this so wrong. He wants to crawl into a corner somewhere and hide.

The whole table is staring at them now. “Forgive me for asking, Peeks,” Shampoo-Commercial says, slowly. “But did you just kiss our illustrious captain, here?”

“Um.” Patrick’s not sure what this captain business is about, but: “Yes?”

Jonny’s still staring at him like he’s grown four or five extra heads. Patrick wishes he’d stop that.

“And why,” Shampoo-Commercial asks, “did you do that?”

“It was fucking weird,” one of the other guys says, like he can’t keep it in anymore.

“Are we not, um,” Patrick says, looking around. He can’t be that far wrong. He has the name on his wrist. “Are we not…soulmates?”

The word seems to land on the table with an audible thud. Then nothing is audible anymore, because everyone at the table is making so much noise.

“What the fuck,” several people are saying, and there’s a lot of incoherent shouting, and Shampoo-Commercial narrows his eyes at Patrick’s wrist, which is lying on the table, cover on. Patrick snatches it away before Shampoo-Commercial can grab it.

Jonny’s half off the edge of the booth now, no longer touching Patrick at all. “What the fuck, Taze!” Widow’s Peak says to him. “You guys are fucking soulmates?”

“No,” Jonny says. He sounds like he’s breathing hard. “We’re not. I don’t know what…”

Lots of people are staring at Patrick. He has a few moments of wild flailing—he could say it was a joke, say he was just trying to yank Jonny’s chain, but he doesn’t know anything, can’t keep this up—and finally he says. “So. I may…have lost my memory. A little bit.”

“Oh, shit,” one of them says, and then they all start talking again: whether they should call someone named Q, or Stan, or the trainers, whoever they are. Patrick sits there, drowning in the noise, feeling more overwhelmed than he has since he first woke up.

Jonny’s the one who cuts through the noise. “We’re taking him to the hospital,” he says, in a tone of voice that no one argues with. He’s lost his hunched-in stance, and he’s not shying away from Patrick anymore, though he’s not looking at him, either. “Which of you is sober enough to drive?”

Shampoo-Commercial, whose name turns out to be Sharpy, hasn’t been drinking, so they get into his car, with a bearded guy named Duncs in the front. (There was a Seabs as well, and a Bicks. Patrick’s skeptical of these guys’ names.)

Jonny spends the first part of the drive on the phone with someone named Stan, telling him what happened to Patrick. Apparently a lot of people are really worried about him.

“Go to Northwestern Memorial,” Jonny says when he clicks the phone off. “We’re supposed to ask for Clarkson in Neurology.”

“Okay, so, amnesia I get,” Duncs is saying. “Not really, but whatever. What I want to know is, why did Peeks think he and Jonny were soulmates?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sharpy asks, an evil grin in his voice.

“That’s not what’s important right now,” Jonny says, voice like iron.

“I don’t know, sounds pretty important to me,” Sharpy says. “If Peeks has your—”

“We have a game tomorrow,” Jonny says, like that’s the direst thing he could possibly say.

“A game?” Patrick asks. “Do we play something?”

There’s a short silence around the car, like they’re surprised. Then: “Ever hear of the NHL?” Sharpy asks.

***

Patrick’s still reeling from it when they get to Northwestern Memorial. Not just a hockey player. An NHL player, on one of the best teams in the country. He’s not sure he totally believes it, even after they showed him his Wikipedia page. He—he was drafted _first overall._ They won the Cup _twice._

“And we play together,” he says to the guys.

“Yeah, we do,” Jonny says gruffly, but it doesn’t sound annoyed. It sounds…possessive, maybe. Patrick doesn’t hate it.

Jonny disappears to make more phone calls once they’re inside—apparently he’s the team captain or something, which sounds important. The rest of them try to fill out Patrick’s admittance paperwork, which is a challenge because Patrick doesn’t know anything about himself. “Well, do you feel like you’re on any medications?” Duncs is asking, which, how would Patrick know, when Jonny comes back and rolls his eyes and steals the clipboard.

“Yeah, you guys are just normal friends,” Sharpy says in a stage whisper while Jonny fills out Patrick’s information.

It feels like a long time before Dr. Clarkson can see them. Duncs has to leave after half an hour, saying something about how Kelly-Rae is going to kill him if he doesn’t ice his back tonight. Patrick’s head is throbbing by then, with tiredness as much as anything else, and he keeps fighting the urge to lean over and rest it on Jonny’s shoulder. He has to keep reminding himself of the sound of Jonny’s voice when Jonny said they weren’t soulmates.

Dr. Clarkson finally sees them after an hour. He does some neurological tests, follow the finger, stand on one foot, et cetera, and says that any concussion is mild. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were skating again in a week or so,” he says, and everyone looks relieved.

“And my memories?” Patrick asks.

“They should come back,” the doctor says. “It’s hard to give a timeline, but I’d hope to see progress within a few days.”

He goes over concussion protocol with Patrick, as if Patrick doesn’t know—and huh, Patrick realizes, he does know. That piece of knowledge is still firmly in his brain. When the doctor makes light of the risk of lingering symptoms, Patrick wants to scoff, and it’s unnerving because he doesn’t know what bad experiences are underlying that.

“Do you have anyone who can stay with you tonight?” the doctor says before he leaves.

Sharpy and Jonny do a furious bit of eye contact. “Yeah, I can stay with him,” Jonny says while Sharpy grins triumphantly, and Patrick doesn’t know if he should be more relieved that Jonny will or hurt that Jonny didn’t want to.

It’s not quite midnight when the three of them walk out. “You should call your mom,” Jonny says on the way to the parking garage. “You don’t want her to hear it from the news.”

Right. Patrick forgot. He must have parents, even if he can’t conjure their faces right now. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and fumbles with it for a moment before he remembers that he still doesn’t know the passcode. “I can’t, um…”

Sharpy rolls his eyes. “I keep telling you to get a new phone. Fingerprint unlock is where it’s at.”

“Hey, I love my phone,” Patrick says, and, okay, he’s not sure he does, but it _feels_ true. He tries a few more random passcodes, until Jonny makes a frustrated noise and takes his phone from him.

“Here,” he says, and punches in some numbers.

Patrick follows his finger as best he can. “My birth year?” he guesses.

There’s a pause. “Sure,” Jonny says, and Sharpy actually snorts out loud.

Patrick’s pretty sure he’s missing something. Again.

They get in the car, and Patrick calls a nice lady who is apparently his mom. It’s weird, the way it makes him want to cry. He doesn’t remember anything about her, couldn’t pick her out of a lineup, but when she gets teary on the phone, his chest clenches up and he gets teary, too. He promises he’s okay like six times.

The car feels really quiet after he hangs up. Jonny’s sitting on the other side of the backseat, even though there’s no one in the front anymore. He doesn’t seem like he’d welcome any kind of contact, though. Patrick looks at the back of the driver’s seat in front of him and wonders when this will be over.

***

The building they stop at is unfamiliar. Patrick doesn’t even realize it’s his building until Sharpy tells him to get out. “See you tomorrow, when maybe you’ll have remembered why all this is hilarious,” Sharpy says.

Jonny’s the one who leads him up to his condo. Patrick couldn’t have found it on his own. They’re walking down the hallway from the elevator when Patrick realizes: he doesn’t have any keys in his pocket. They must have been attached to his wallet. “Jonny,” he starts to say, but Jonny’s already unlocking the door, with a key from his own keyring.

Patrick stares. Then he stares some more once they’re inside: at Jonny, not at the apartment. The medical forms, and the passcode, and now the key—

Jonny must know he’s being stared at, because he avoids Patrick’s gaze studiously. It takes until after they’ve taken off their shoes for Patrick to crack and say, “Are you sure we’re not—”

“ _Yes,_ ” Jonny says. Then, “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

Patrick’s bedroom doesn’t look familiar. Not as familiar as the feel of Jonny at his side, anyway. But his bed looks big and comfy, and he’s looking forward to being in it.

“What about you?” he asks Jonny.

Jonny doesn’t meet his eyes. “There’s a guest room.”

It’s weird to be alone, once the door has closed behind him. Patrick knows he should just go to sleep, but his mind won’t turn off: there’s so much there, he can tell, but it’s like it’s behind a wall. When he’s alone in the dark, with no distractions, it’s impossible not to beat his head against it.

And then there are the memories he does have, the ones that keep popping up in the absence of anything else. Jonny, pulling away from him like he was poison.

He lies awake for about twenty minutes before giving up and going to the kitchen. He finds a Gatorade in the fridge, and it feels familiar when he drinks it. He guesses he likes this color.

He’s standing in his shadowy kitchen, drinking it, when Jonny shows up in the doorway.

Patrick pauses mid-sip. Jonny doesn’t look surprised to see him. Patrick wonders if Jonny actually wanted something from the kitchen and just feels awkward about coming in now, or if he came here to find Patrick.

The longer Jonny stands there, the more the second option seems likely. Jonny isn’t even looking at him directly, but Patrick can feel his attention on him like electricity on his skin. It’s amazing how much this feels familiar, wanted, when everything else is strange.

Finally, Jonny blurts out, “Is it true?”

Patrick isn’t sure what he means for a minute. Then he holds up his wrist, the one with the cover on it, and Jonny’s eyes zero in on it.

“It was, like, the first thing I checked,” Patrick says. His voice sounds loud in the quiet darkness of the kitchen. “Sorry I—I mean. Obviously I read that wrong,” he says, though he’s not sure he did. Not entirely.

Jonny comes closer, toward the kitchen island where Patrick’s standing. His eyes are dark, hard to make out in the dim light, but Patrick’s pretty sure they’re still on his wrist. Patrick puts his wrist down on the island, and Jonny puts a hand out to touch it. The touch is gentle, just a brush against the cover, but it sends shivers up Patrick’s arm regardless.

“Can I see?” Jonny asks quietly.

Patrick opens his mouth to say something. Then, instead, he gets his fingers under the wrist cover and slides it off.

The name is on the underside of his wrist, invisible from this angle. Jonny takes his wrist in those same gentle fingers and turns it over.

It’s still dark in the kitchen. But there’s just enough light coming in from the hallway to show the name: _Jonny,_ the letters round and strong and distinct. Jonny’s fingers run over the letters, and the shivers that go up Patrick’s arm are so intense he has to fight not to make a sound.

“You didn’t know,” Patrick says, his voice less steady than he wants it to be.

Jonny shakes his head. He lets go of Patrick’s wrist and takes a step back. Patrick darts a look at his face, but it’s too dark to see anything.

“Is yours—?” he asks, and Jonny ducks his head, turns away. Patrick can see the cover on his wrist, a different brand than his own, but just as heavy-duty.

“It’s late,” Jonny says. “You should get some sleep.” And he walks out, leaving Patrick standing there alone, tingles still running all over his body.


	2. Chapter 2

Patrick has confused dreams that night, where he’s grasping after things he can’t quite reach. He wakes up with the frustrating feeling that his dreams would have had a lot of information for him if he could have held onto it.

Jonny’s in his kitchen drinking coffee when he gets up. Patrick’s relieved to see him. He thought maybe, after the way last night ended…anyway, he’s relieved.

Jonny doesn’t meet his eyes. “Remember anything yet?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” Patrick says. Not that he can successfully drag from his unconscious, anyway. “I guess I should…” He gropes for the logistical things he should do, to keep his life from collapsing around his ears while he doesn’t remember it. Things like… “Oh. Fuck,” he says. “I guess I need to cancel my credit cards.”

“Took care of it,” Jonny says, and Patrick boggles at him, because—you need to know things to cancel credit cards: things like which credit card companies, to begin with, but also the person’s birthdate, and security question answers, and Jonny has a key to Patrick’s house, and he knows Patrick’s phone code, and…

And they’ve already been down this road. Patrick bites his lip. “Thanks,” he says.

Jonny nods and puts his mug down on the counter with a click. “You should call Brisson before we go to skate,” he says, and walks out of the room before Patrick can ask who the fuck Brisson is.

Patrick spends the time before skate figuring out, first, that Pat Brisson is his agent, and second, that agents don’t love hearing that their clients have amnesia. “Jesus Christ, Kane,” Brisson groans over the phone. “You say this happened in a bar?”

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault, I was mugged,” Patrick says. He doesn’t like the weight of Brisson’s voice when he says that. It makes him wonder what Brisson remembers that Patrick doesn’t. “I just need new sh—stuff, like a driver’s license and stuff, and I don’t remember any of my own info.” And he doesn’t really want to ask Jonny, when Jonny’s being all weird.

“Yeah, yeah, my office will take care of it,” Brisson says.

Sweet. Patrick could get used to this thing where he has an agent. 

Jonny drives them to skate in Patrick’s car, this huge Hummer that Patrick instantly loves, no matter how much Jonny grumbles about it being ridiculous. “You’re just jealous,” Patrick says, and Jonny rolls his eyes but his face looks less pinched—more like the Jonny from the bar last night, before Patrick fucked everything up. Patrick wonders how he can keep Jonny looking like that.

Maybe by getting his memory back.

They’re early for skate. Patrick checks in with the trainers as soon as he gets there, and they put him through more of the same tests from last night. Then he gets someone to point him toward the locker room, where he gets a rousing reception from total strangers.

It’s…surprisingly nice, considering he doesn’t actually recognize them except for the few he met last night. “Nope, don’t know any of you losers,” he says when a shaggy-haired kid asks him. “I feel like I’m probably better off, though,” and the kid yelps and tries to give him a noogie. It makes Patrick grin as he squirms away, feeling way more at ease than he thought he would.

He expects practice to be kind of fun to watch. What he doesn’t expect is how badly he wants to be out on the ice, as soon as he’s on the bench. He doesn’t have any specific memories of himself skating, but he can almost feel it: the hard ice underneath him, his blade cutting into it, the traction and the speed and the jolt of the puck hitting his stick. He watches his teammates circle and can practically taste how much he wants to be out there with them.

There’s a big mustached guy overseeing things, and he seems to be the Q the guys were talking about last night. “All right, there, Kaner?” he calls over while Patrick’s sitting on the bench.

“Yeah, Coach,” Patrick says, the title popping out of his mouth without him thinking about it.

“Good, ’cause we could really use you back,” Q says.

Patrick’s on board with this. His leg is shaking while he sits here.

It’s frustrating to go back to the locker room without skating. Patrick feels a little at sea while everyone’s changing around him: these people he doesn’t know, who just took part in an activity he can’t join them in right now. He wants to go stand next to Jonny, but it occurs to him that maybe he’s being too clingy. Jonny was pretty weird this morning, and it wasn’t even really his idea to go home with Patrick last night. What if…

While he’s thinking these things, though, Jonny comes over to him. “Do you want me to come back with you?” Jonny asks abruptly.

Patrick looks up at him. Jonny’s voice was kind of clipped, and Patrick has all sorts of reasons for thinking Jonny might want to avoid him. But…Patrick doesn’t know. He doesn’t have any actual memories of Jonny to base this on, but his gut is telling him that Jonny isn’t hoping he’ll say no here.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, gambling, “that would be good,” and he’s relieved when Jonny relaxes a little.

He feels the tension rise again when they get back to his apartment. Jonny’s supposed to go take a nap, but Patrick can see him hesitating. He keeps turning to go to the guest room, then turning back like he’s going to say something, then thinking better of it and turning to go again, until finally Patrick says, “Yeah?”

“Sorry,” Jonny blurts out. “About. I mean. Last night. I shouldn’t have…”

This boy is ridiculously awkward. Patrick should possibly not like him this much. “Shouldn’t have what?” Patrick asks.

Jonny’s fidgeting with the seam of his pants. “I shouldn’t have gotten you to show me your name,” he says. “Not now. When you’re all.” He waves a hand in the direction of Patrick’s head.

“Oh,” Patrick says. He hadn’t even been thinking about that. “It’s okay, dude. I mean, I already kissed you in front of everyone.”

Jonny’s eyes flick up. He doesn’t look mad, though. He looks… “Yeah,” he says, and that’s Patrick’s mouth he’s looking at.

Patrick feels his heart pick up speed. Jonny’s lips are parted a little, and Patrick is flooded with the image of what it would be like to kiss him. For real this time, without Jonny freaking out. Jonny’s standing close, and if Patrick just leans in…

Patrick’s phone rings.

Patrick jumps. He slaps at it, silencing the ringer, but it’s too late: Jonny’s already pulling back, the moment broken. Patrick pulls it out and answers it instead.

It takes him a minute to catch on to what the woman is saying on the other end—he’s still looking at Jonny, who’s turned away in the doorway. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” he says.

“We just wanted to alert you to an additional flagged transaction from yesterday,” the woman says, so apparently she’s from his bank. “It looks like there was a withdrawal of two thousand in cash.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. Jonny makes a questioning face at him. “Someone used my card to withdraw two grand yesterday,” Patrick says to him in an undertone. Then, to the lady: “Um, yeah, you’d better contest that,” he says. Then, “Hang on, when was it?”

“I’m showing a time stamp of two-fifty-six p.m.,” she says, and…huh.

“No, that was before I lost my card,” he says, turning away from Jonny. “I guess you’d better…”

“We can still contest it if you weren’t the one who made the withdrawal,” she says.

Patrick has no idea if he made the withdrawal. But he doesn’t have any reason to think someone messed with his account _before_ he got mugged, and he doesn’t want to fuck up things with his bank. “No, it’s okay, you’d better…yeah, you can keep it on there,” he says, and he hangs up, feeling disconcerted.

“So?” Jonny says as soon as Patrick clicks the phone off.

“Apparently I withdrew two thousand bucks yesterday afternoon,” Patrick says, and the furrow between Jonny’s brows gets deeper.

“What? Why?”

“Fucked if I know,” Patrick says, but it doesn’t make Jonny’s frown go away. His face shifts into something serious, upright, like he’s about to address a troop of Boy Scouts or something. 

“Patrick,” he says slowly. “If you were into something, like drugs—"

“What the fuck,” Patrick says.

“I’m not trying to get you in trouble,” Jonny says. “I just need to know, so that I can—”

“Jesus. Get the stick out of your ass, will you,” Patrick says. “I _don’t remember,_ remember? It’s not like I’m holding out on you. I honestly have no idea what the money was for.”

Jonny looks skeptical, which is dumb. It’s not like he doesn’t know about Patrick’s memory. “Okay. Well, if you remember…”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “You’ll be the first to know.”

***

Jonny goes off for his nap, and Patrick…well, Patrick sort of tears his bathroom apart.

He doesn’t know that the bathroom is where he’d keep drugs, if he had them. He’s just thinking: pills, medicine cabinet, makes sense, right? He tears through his cabinets and doesn’t find more than a dusty bottle of expired painkillers, so he moves on to the bedroom. Nothing much there, either—though there’s a vibrator in his bedside table he’ll have to look at more closely later—and that means he’s most likely safe. If he had illegal drugs, he wouldn’t keep them somewhere a guest could find them. But just to be on the safe side, he looks through his hall closet, and then the kitchen, the dining room.

By the time he gets to the living room, he’s feeling a little silly. What kind of idiot keeps illegal drugs in his living room? He lets himself get distracted by the hockey memorabilia on the mantel: pictures, him and the team, him and Jonny, the two of them holding the Stanley Cup. Jonny’s beaming at him like he’s better than the Cup over their heads, and Patrick gets stuck on that picture for a while before he moves on to the framed pucks.

So weird to look at these pucks and imagine himself accomplishing this stuff. There’s his first goal, his first hat trick, his first…oh shit. The goal that won them the 2010 Stanley Cup.

“No fucking way,” Patrick says, touching the glass. He won them the Cup? Okay, not just him, obviously, but—wow. He wouldn’t believe it, if the puck weren’t right here before him. This is so fucking awesome.

The ring box on his mantel is no less awesome. He opens it to see this fucking dope display of diamonds and rubies. “Shit,” he says, grinning at the sparkling 88, and he tilts the box and feels…

No. No way. No way does he keep a stash of illegal drugs in a box with his _Cup ring._

He pulls at the little velvety backing, and it comes away pretty easily. There is something under there: not drugs, though. It’s another Cup ring.

This one’s in a different design, all diamonds instead of rubies. 2010, he guesses. But, like, is his normal self actually so jaded by two Cup rings that he doesn’t bother displaying both of them?

He pulls it out the one that got shoved in the bottom of the box, and he turns it to see the number 19.

Patrick stares at it. That…that is definitely the number 19. And that’s the name Toews, above it in big unmistakable letters. But…

Maybe Jonny left it at his house by accident. Maybe Patrick put it here for safekeeping. Maybe there’s a totally innocent explanation that’s nothing like what Patrick’s thinking.

He hasn’t come up with anything else a couple of minute later when Jonny comes into the room, yawning from his nap. “Whatcha doing?” Jonny asks.

Patrick holds up the ring. Jonny blinks at it sleepily for a minute, and then he goes still. Caught.

So. Not an accidental, _let’s throw it in here for safekeeping_ thing, then.

“I don’t get it,” Patrick says. His voice sounds rough. “You say we’re not—but—”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jonny says. He sounds almost angry, which, what the fuck, if anyone has the right to be angry here, it’s Patrick. Jonny’s been holding out on him. “It was just a thing. After the first Cup, we said—well, we wouldn’t have won them without each other, so—”

Patrick’s head gives a throb, like it’s straining to remember. He can picture it so clearly, and he isn’t sure if he’s remembering or not: how earnest Jonny’s face would have been, pressing the ring into Patrick’s hand. The weight of the ring in his hand and those eyes on his face. “I don’t get it,” he says again. “If we’re like this, and I have your…”

Jonny’s not looking at him. Patrick can barely think over the thunder of his hearbeat in his ear.

“You have my name, don’t you?” he says, stumbling over the words, and Jonny’s eyes are wide and startled as they look into his.

“Yes,” Jonny says.

Patrick’s breath catches. He knew it. He _knew_ it, from the very first—

He takes a step forward, automatic, but Jonny’s already taking one back.

“I have to go get ready for the game,” Jonny says.

Patrick wants to scream with frustration. “Can you just—”

“Sorry, I—sorry,” Jonny says, and flees.

Patrick clenches his hand around the Cup ring and manages not to throw it after him.

***

They go to the game.

This is, sort of, the first hockey game Patrick’s ever seen. It’s a weird feeling, because he knows everything about how hockey works: understands what it means when the whistle blows for offsides, shouts in frustration when the Hawks dump the puck when they could have controlled the zone entry, but he can’t remember learning about those things. Can’t remember ever having seen them in effect.

The Hawks are tied two-two in the third when Jonny slides one in for the win, a gorgeous shot gloveside, and Patrick jumps up and screams with the crowd.

Jonny’s grinning and sweaty in the post-game when Patrick makes his way down to the locker room. It’s a good look on him. When he says he’s going out with the team…well, Patrick’s obviously going, whatever the trainers might have to say about that.

Jonny seems to have forgotten about the weirdness between them. He sticks by Patrick’s side once they’re out, which is helpful, since Patrick still doesn’t remember most of his other teammates’ names. They end up against the wall by the dance floor, Jonny drunk enough to be loose-limbed, leaning close and talking to Patrick about his new nutrition plan and how some eggs are better than others, or some shit like that, and Patrick wraps his hand around Jonny’s wrist just above the wrist guard.

It’s not an intentional thing. It just feels like the thing to do. He only realizes what he’s done when Jonny goes still.

Jonny’s not pulling away. It’s not that kind of stillness. It’s the stillness of waiting—of not being able to focus on words anymore because someone’s touching you. Patrick knows because he feels the same thing. The sudden difficulty of finding air.

“Why not?” Patrick manages to say, his breath coming in quick pants like he’s skating. He’s trying not to sound as desperate as he feels. “If you…now that we both know we’re…”

Jonny makes a little sound, and his shoulder presses harder against Patrick’s. For a second Patrick thinks—

But then Jonny’s straightening up again. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says, _inaccurately_. Then he pulls away, saying, “I’m gonna head home,” and Patrick doesn’t understand _anything._

***

It makes Patrick crabby to wake up without Jonny in his apartment. You know, because of that one whole day he can remember where Jonny was there. Though if the Cup rings and the apartment key and the phone passcode are any indication, maybe Jonny’s over here a lot. Staying in the guest room, because—that’s what they do, apparently.

Not because of Patrick’s preferences, that’s for sure.

But you know what? To hell with Jonny. Patrick’s only known him for like a day and a half. He has—well, he probably has other people. Lots of them. Like…Sharpy. And his family. And…yeah. Plenty of people.

One of them calls him while he’s poking through his email before afternoon practice. The caller ID is just an icon of a cat, so…

“Hello?” he says, and someone shrieks, “Patty!”

“Um,” he says.

“It’s Jackie,” she says. “You know, your sister, who had to find out through freaking DeadSpin about your memory loss because you didn’t call and okay, now that I’m saying this, I’m realizing how stupid it is, so sorry about that.”

She asks him about his memory loss for a while, and there’s not that much he can say—the answer to every “do you remember” question is pretty much no, until they get into the basic life skills category, because, yes, he does remember how to brush his teeth and use the bathroom, thanks. “It’s just so weird,” she says for like the fourteenth time.

“Uh-huh,” he says, stalling. He wants to ask—doesn’t know if it’s no big deal to ask, or if it’s dumb to even contemplate it, but hey, she’s his sister; he’s can’t be risking too much here. “Um, this might be a weird question, but…you know what my soulmark says, right?”

She laughs. “Is that a joke?”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s, like, the hugest no ever,” she says. “You’re like Fort Knox with that thing.” Then, eager: “Why, what does it say?”

“Yeah, nice try.” So apparently Jonny wasn’t the only one he hadn’t told. Maybe he had some good reason not to tell her, maybe he didn’t; either way, he’ll wait till his memory is back to change his mind about that. “Sorry, Jacks,” he says when she protests.

“Oh, hey,” she says, sounding happier. “You called me Jacks.”

“Do I—oh.” He did that without thinking. That has to be a good sign, right?

“I’m totally curing you,” she says. “Remember that the next time you lose your memory and don’t call me about it.”

Patrick is left thinking about the soulmark thing after they hang up. Apparently he’s been hiding it from everyone in his life, which…is that normal? Is it because it’s another dude’s name? He guesses maybe that’s a problem in professional sports. He doesn’t actually remember, but it feels like it could be a thing.

He goes back to his laptop and types _gay hockey player_ into Google. Some stuff comes up: a gay referee, and then a list of LGBT figures in sports, but there aren’t any names on it for the NHL. He scrolls down farther, and there’s a recent article on something called huffpost about hockey player soulmarks.

_Does the NHL truly have no gay players, or are they simply playing it close to the pads?_ the opening paragraph asks. _The dark days of players taking razorblades and tattoo machines to their marks may be over, but in the decades since the passage of the Soulmate Sanctity and Secrecy Act, not a single NHL player has stepped forward to disclose a same-sex name…_

And, wow. There aren’t _any_ gay NHLers? Okay. So maybe there’s a good reason Patrick didn’t go around advertising it.

If that’s true, though, it would definitely explain—well. He doesn’t want to think that about Jonny. But it would make a disturbing amount of sense out of the last two days.

It makes him slimy to think about it. He probably shouldn’t assume anything; there’s so little he knows. He can ask Jonny about it when he sees him, maybe after practice—except it turns out he doesn’t go to practice, because Brisson calls him when he’s headed out the door.

“The news broke on DeadSpin about your amnesia,” Brisson says.

“Oh, yeah,” Patrick says. He remembers Jackie saying something about that, though he doesn’t know what DeadSpin is. Some news thing, he guesses.

“We’ve got to control the story,” Brisson says, sounding tense about it, so apparently this is bad. “Keep it no comment, okay? And stay home from practice today.”

“But the team already—”

“It’s an open practice,” Brisson says. “We don’t need to give the public access to you right now.”

Okay, then. That’s fine. Patrick will see Jonny—sometime. He can wait.

He’s definitely not sulking when he curls up on the couch and puts on Netflix. He’s—resting. He’s recovering from a major head injury. Which probably means he shouldn’t be watching TV, but fuck it. This _House of Cards_ shit looks interesting.

He’s three episodes in and starting to care more about the downfall of the president than he ever thought was possible when the doorbell rings.

“Did you tell someone?” Jonny asks as soon as Patrick opens the door.

“What the fuck? No,” Patrick says. He gets that Jonny’s freaked out about the gay thing, but Patrick wouldn’t out someone. Well, except for the thing where he kissed him in a bar. But he didn’t understand it then. He’s not about to—

“Not about the.” Jonny waves his wrist, annoyed. “About the amnesia. It’s all over the internet.”

“Oh.” Patrick steps back a little. “No. I heard, though.”

“You can’t talk to anyone about it,” Jonny says, really emphatic. “The way we’re treated, as athletes, it’s—”

“I know. Brisson told me.”

“Okay, good,” Jonny says. “So you really can’t—”

“Jonny. Chill. I _know._ ” Patrick wants to be annoyed with him—is, kind of—but the way Jonny’s looking at him, all earnest and concerned, makes it hard for the feeling to have any bite.

Then they’re just standing there, awkward, so Patrick waves a hand toward the living room. “I’m watching _House of Cards._ Want to join?”

“You’ve already seen—oh. Right.” Jonny hesitates for a moment. “Yeah, okay.”

Sitting next to Jonny on the couch feels familiar, like Patrick’s getting echoes of it across time. He’d swear by anything he owns that they’ve done this a lot. He wonders if they usually sit nearer than this, or if that’s part of the distance they maintain, both of them being dumb and not showing each other their soulmarks.

Patrick wonders if he’s ever asked, over the years. Wonders if Jonny’s said no, and how Patrick felt about that.

It doesn’t seem to have changed how Patrick feels. Every time he looks over at Jonny, he gets distracted from the show. Jonny’s so…the afternoon light comes through the windows and highlights his profile, and Patrick can’t look away. Jonny catches him staring after a while and looks back, and heat washes slow and inexorable up Patrick’s body.

When Patrick gets up to get water, he sits down right next to Jonny.

He can feel his pulse in his throat when he does it. Jonny stiffens—and Patrick almost pulls away, almost, almost, but he bites down on the inside of his lip and stays where he is, slouched against the couch cushions. And slowly, over the course of a few minutes, Jonny relaxes.

Once Jonny’s lax and warm against him, Patrick puts his hand on his own knee and slides it slowly over until it brushes against Jonny’s.

Jonny goes rigid again immediately. “Patrick—” he says in a choked voice, and Patrick pulls back, huffing out a breath in frustration.

“Is it the gay thing?” he asks. He shouldn’t care this much, he shouldn’t, but— “Is that why you don’t want to?”

“It’s not that I—” Jonny says. “I’m not the problem here.”

“Well, _I’m_ sure as fuck not the problem,” Patrick says. “Look, I don’t care what everyone else wants, or thinks, or any shit like that. We’re _soulmates._ I just want…” He trails off.

Jonny closes his eyes, like this is paining him. “You don’t remember,” he says. “You don’t really want to—”

“I do, though,” Patrick says. “It’s the only thing I…” He doesn’t know how to get it across: his utter conviction that this, out of this whole world full of things he doesn’t remember and doesn’t understand, this is right. He has no doubts about it.

“When I first saw you in the bar,” he says in a lower voice. “I didn’t remember you. But I looked at you, and I…” He can feel his cheeks coloring. “I think maybe there are some things you don’t forget.”

He hears Jonny’s intake of breath. He looks over and sees Jonny squeezing his hands into fists on his knees.

“If I thought you meant it,” Jonny says, and Patrick’s heart leaps in wild hope. “If I thought it was really you saying this—”

“It is me,” Patrick says. “I don’t know how to be anyone else. Look at me.”

Jonny does, his dark brown eyes landing on Patrick’s. Patrick can barely breathe.

“Maybe…maybe we should wait,” Jonny says. His tongue darts out to lick his lip, and Patrick tracks it with his eyes. “It would be the smart thing to do.”

Patrick can barely breathe for how hot the air feels in his mouth. “Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?” he asks, and Jonny makes a little noise.

He leans in a little more, so that they’re only inches apart. Patrick can almost taste the kiss that’s about to happen. Then—then Jonny leans in all the way, and their lips brush, and Patrick’s the one to make the noise. 

Jonny gentles their mouths together and steals the breath from Patrick’s lungs. Then he presses him back against the couch, and Patrick goes down under him, dizzy and gasping and dissolving into light.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re so pretty,” Patrick says.

It’s a few hours later, and they’re lying on Patrick’s bed, sweaty and sticky and awesome. Jonny shoves at Patrick’s face a little. “Shut up,” he mumbles.

“No, really, though.” Patrick’s kind of teasing, but also—Jonny’s really pretty. “You’re just—I like looking at you.”

“Yeah?” Now Jonny’s grinning, pleased. He gets his fingers in Patrick’s hair, scratching his scalp, and Patrick arches into it.

It’s ridiculous how good Patrick feels right now. He feels grounded, for the first time in days. He hadn’t realized how uncomfortable he’d felt in his own skin until Jonny touched him and everything fell into place. He wonders if it was the amnesia that had him unsettled like that, or if he’s been feeling like that for a while.

Jonny’s looking down at him: a little shy, a little wondering. It’s a good look on him. Almost as good as the way he looked when Patrick’s hand was on his cock, the way his eyelids fluttered and his whole face went slack and ridiculous.

Patrick pushes into the head massage, thinking about how right this is, the two of them together, and then—“Oh, hey,” he says, surprised.

“Huh? What?” Jonny says.

“No, it’s no big deal,” Patrick says. “It’s just, I figured out what my phone passcode means,” and Jonny laughs and leans down to kiss him.

***

They get out of bed eventually and put together dinner—or at least, they try to put together dinner. Patrick keeps getting distracted, because Jonny’s right there, and he gets to touch him whenever he wants to now. 

“Do you have, like, stuff to do tonight?” he asks, leaning his chin on Jonny’s shoulder. 

“Nah.” Jonny feeds Patrick a piece of the mushrooms he’s cutting up. Patrick makes a face at it. “Cleared my schedule for a few days, in case you needed me around.”

“Oh.” Patrick bites down on a grin. Jonny must have done that before any of the stuff they did today, which is just…yeah.

“Why, what about you?” Jonny asks.

“What about me what?”

“Do you have stuff to do?”

“…Huh,” Patrick says.

The calendar app on his phone has a lot of stuff in it. “Looks like I was supposed to work out today,” Patrick says, scrolling through the listings.

“Looks like you did,” Jonny says with this face like he thinks he’s being funny, and Patrick elbows him.

He has a bunch of team stuff in his schedule: practices, meetings, games, a road trip in a few days…shit, he probably isn’t allowed to go on that. That’s about it, except…

“Oh, weird,” he says.

“What?” Jonny asks.

Patrick shakes his head. “It looks like I was supposed to meet someone two nights ago. While we were at the bar.”

Jonny frowns. “You were supposed to meet someone?”

Patrick shrugs and hands the phone over. There’s nothing much in the calendar detail: just the name “Trav” from 9:15 to 9:30.

“What the hell kind of name is Trav?” Jonny asks.

“I don’t know,” Patrick says. “I mean, your names are all Duncs and Seabs and Tazer, so…”

Jonny doesn’t rise to the bait; just keeps his eyes on Patrick like he’s waiting for an explanation. “Hey, don’t look at me,” Patrick says. “I don’t know any more than you do.” Except he’s not sure that’s quite true. There’s something there, niggling at the back of his mind, like that spot in the middle of his back that he can never quite reach when it itches. Trav. Something about that name, that night…

“If you were meeting someone at a bar, though…” Jonny says.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, I searched my apartment for drugs,” he says. “Besides, I was out with you guys, so it doesn’t make sense that I’d be meeting someone. Maybe I put it at the wrong time or whatever. Maybe Trav isn’t what I meant to write.”

“You are kind of bad at typing,” Jonny says, and Patrick makes a face at him, and Jonny sticks his tongue out and it’s soft and tastes like sweet peppers when Patrick kisses against the counter. 

Patrick thinks about it later, when they’re doing the dishes after dinner. The name Trav doesn’t mean anything to him, but it does make him feel kind of anxious, like there’s some reason for anxiety he forgot about. And he keeps flashing back to the shit that happened the night he lost his memory: waking up in the back of a bar, in a storeroom, without his wallet, without the two thousand in cash he apparently withdrew earlier that day.

He’s not totally sure, but he thinks that when he picked his phone up off the floor, the time on the screen was around 9:30.

***

Jonny stays the night, obviously. He’s in Patrick’s bed this time, and the only weird thing is how normal it feels to wake up next to him. Patrick would almost doubt Jonny’s word that they weren’t together before this, except that Jonny fought against this so hard for the last few days.

He’s not fighting now. He’s clinging, nuzzling the side of Patrick’s face as Patrick gropes for his phone to see what time it is. “Ugh, I have to go to my doctor’s appointment,” Patrick says.

“Ten m’r minutes,” Jonny mumbles.

“Aren’t you the big important captain?” Patrick says. The nuzzling feels really good. “Aren’t you supposed to be on time to inspire the troops with your dedication or whatever?”

Jonny looks at him balefully with sleep-dark eyes. Patrick laughs and kisses him.

They get up eventually, Jonny walking a little funny from the way he rode Patrick into the mattress last night. Jonny’s going to be feeling that one during morning skate, and Patrick can’t even bring himself to feel bad about it.

He has trouble fighting down his good mood when he reports to Dr. Clarkson about his lack of memories. It’s hard to feel bad about anything when his body is tingling from Jonny’s touch. “There are still a few things I do remember, you know?” he says. “Like, I don’t remember playing hockey, but I know the rules. And I don’t remember my sister, but I called her by her nickname without thinking about it. And—”

_And I remember wanting my soulmate,_ he almost adds, though it’s not true. He doesn’t _remember_ wanting Jonny. He just does, and has from the first moment he saw him.

“And, yeah,” he finishes lamely. “Little stuff like which way to turn to get to the locker room.”

“So it sounds like it’s your episodic memory that’s still a problem,” the doctor says, writing some things on his notepad.

He can’t tell Patrick when it’s going to come back. But there is good news: the doctor sends him on his way with instructions to work with the trainers at the UC to develop a workout regime that will ease him back to a normal activity level. It’s about time. Patrick’s been feeling antsy, like his body is used to doing more than he’s using it for right now.

It’s not an open skate this morning, so Patrick goes straight from the hospital to Johnny’s Ice House. He stops in to watch practice before going to meet with the trainers, and it’s surprisingly good to see the team. He doesn’t think he had this many fuzzy feelings about them yesterday. It’s still not the same level of fuzzy feelings he gets when he looks at Jonny, but hey. Jonny’s in a special category.

“Something we should know about, Peekaboo?” Sharpy asks, circling in front of him while Patrick’s busy smiling at Jonny across the ice.

“Fuck off,” Patrick says. “I still don’t believe that’s an actual nickname you have for me.”

“This guy bothering you?” Jonny asks, skidding to a stop so that he showers Sharpy with ice spray. Patrick knew there was a reason he liked him. Jonny would probably never call him a name as dumb as—

“Oh my God,” Patrick says, abruptly enough that Sharpy and Jonny stop shoving each other and look at him. “I—you gave me that nickname,” he says to Jonny. He’s sure of it all of a sudden. “It was in the locker room. We were—younger, and—”

“Are you remembering?” Jonny asks, skating up to the boards. Patrick takes his hands and grips them tight, because he’s _almost_ remembering. It’s just a blur of faces, but he has the spatial orientation in his mind: remembers where he was standing, where Jonny was when he called over the nickname suggestion, how new and exciting everything felt.

“You laughed,” he says to Sharpy, opening his eyes.

Sharpy beams at him. “I sure as fuck did,” he says, clapping Patrick on the back. “Good job, Peeks. You,” he says to Jonny, pointing at him with his glove, “are doing something right to this kid.” And he skates off, leaving Jonny blushing red behind him.

It feels really fucking good to have remembered something. Makes him think that the doctors are right, and it will actually all come back to him. Patrick calls his mom after skate to let her know. He still doesn’t quite remember her, but he does have a few vague images in his mind while he talks to her: the yellow tile of a kitchen, the blond of her hair…

It’s like now that he believes his memories will come back, a door’s cracked open in his mind. He smiles widely at Jonny, who’s been leaning against the wall, watching him talk.

“Come nap with me?” Jonny asks when he’s off the phone, and Patrick’s not gonna say no to that. He hasn’t even had Jonny’s cock inside of him yet.

After, he drowses on Jonny a little, but he’s not really tired. Not enough for a pre-game level of nap. Eventually he gets up and showers and sits down to spend some quality time with his phone. 

It’s frustrating how little comes back to him as he pokes around his apps. He does get something when he’s going through his texts: there’s an exchange with someone he’s pretty sure is his sister Jess about some book called _Divergent,_ and as he reads it he has a brief flash of someone putting the book in his hands. Just that, though. He can’t see her face or remember anything about her.

He clicks out of the text conversation, disappointed with himself, and sees that the one beneath it is labeled “Trav.”

Shit. He’d almost forgotten about that little bit of weirdness. But of course there’d be a text conversation, if he were meeting the guy. He should have thought of that sooner.

It’s not much of a conversation—less than a dozen texts, all from the day Patrick lost his memory. It looks really fucking suspicious.

Patrick: _hey, i hear you can hook me up?_

Then a twenty-minute gap, and Trav: _who told you that?_

Patrick: _ryan. don’t know his last name._

A longer gap, almost an hour. Then: _yeah, i can swing it. 4grand, cash, half to get the address._

Patrick: _how do i get it to you_

Trav: _you going out tonight?_

A gap from Patrick this time. Then: _yeah, rockit_

Trav: _back hallway. 915_

Patrick: _k_

And that’s it.

Patrick wishes to hell he had any idea what it was about.

He sends a text to Trav— _wtf happened at rockit that night?_ —but he doesn’t really expect to get a response. Trav doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who volunteers information.

Ryan, though. Maybe there’s a lead there. Patrick doesn’t see a text chain with anyone named Ryan, so he thumbs over to his contacts and does a search.

There’s…a weirdly large amount of results. Ryan Callahan, Ryan Kesler, Ryan Malone, Ryan Miller, Ryan Suter, Ryan Whitney, even a Bobby Ryan—why the fuck does he know so many Ryans?

There’s only one without a last name, though. Patrick hovers his finger over the contact. It’s going to be super awkward if he’s wrong. He hesitates for a second, then exits his contacts and goes to his phone app.

Okay, yeah, there it is. Before his calls with his family and Brisson and everyone, five days ago, is a call to Ryan, no last name.

Patrick shoots a look at the bedroom door. Jonny shouldn’t be up for another half-hour or so. Not that Patrick has any reason to think Jonny shouldn’t know about this, but—it will just be easier if he’s not around.

He presses the name on his call list.

It rings a couple of times before someone answers. “How’d it go?” the guy says, straight off.

“What?” Patrick asks, startled. Then, “Who is this?”

Ryan or whoever laughs. “Dude, what?”

“Sorry,” Patrick says. Yeah, that was probably a dumb thing to say to someone he called. “It’s just…well, I kind of have amnesia.”

“You have amnesia,” Ryan repeats, the irony heavy in his voice.

“I know it’s weird,” Patrick says. Believe him, he knows. “I’m just trying to track something down, and your number is in my call list, so—do you remember what we talked about?” Shit, he sounds like such an idiot.

There’s a pause. “Yeah, ’cause I’m gonna say that for you now, on a phone call that you’re probably recording,” Ryan says, voice still thick with amusement. “Nice try.”

“Huh?” Patrick says. This isn’t anything like he expected. Maybe it really was drugs, or…fuck, a hooker, or… “No, I really do have amnesia. Look it up.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure whatever ‘accident’ you were in is gonna be on the front page of the papers,” Ryan says, and Patrick’s totally baffled for a minute before he realizes that this guy has no idea who he is.

Wow. This…might be the most he’s had in common with anyone since he woke up.

“Look,” Ryan goes on. “I’m sorry you changed your mind or whatever, but I don’t need this, so I’m gonna—”

“No, hey, wait,” Patrick says before he can hang up or something. “You really can look it up, Patrick Kane, I hit my head—”

“You’re Patrick Kane?” Ryan asks, skeptical.

“So they tell me,” Patrick says. It comes out pretty weak. “Look, I’m trying to track down something that happened a few night ago, when I lost my memory, and I think it has something to do with Trav, or whatever. But I don’t know who he is, either. You don’t have to say…anything you shouldn’t say, or whatever—just, is there anything you can tell me that will help me figure out what happened?”

There’s a longer pause, and Patrick can hear keys clicking before Ryan lets out a gusty sigh. “Shit,” he says. “Fucking Trav. Okay, I’m going to tell you this, and it’s mostly because I’m pretty sure he screwed you over, and I don’t need that kind of shit in my network. So I’m just gonna say, if you really want to see what the deal was, you should head over to the intersection of Merritt and Birch.”

Patrick grabs a piece of paper. “The intersection of…”

“But do _not_ go in and try to talk to them,” Ryan says. “If you do, you’d better have at least ten grand on you, because they’re not going to be happy. And honestly, you’d probably be better off just forgetting the whole thing.”

“Actually,” Patrick says, “I’ve already tried that.”

***

There’s no time to go today. Jonny wakes up from his nap, and Patrick has to go with him to the game.

It’s a good game. The Hawks beat the Rangers four-one, and when Sharpy gets a puck through the five-hole for the last goal, Patrick’s interrupted in the middle of screaming himself hoarse with the memory of doing that very thing himself: against the Avs, a couple of weeks ago. It was the game winner, he’s pretty sure. And Jonny hugged him for it and screamed in his ear and Patrick remembers so clearly the thrill he got from that.

He waits near the locker room after the game, ducking the press and greeting the other guys as they go by. “That was some goal I scored against the Avs a couple of weeks ago, huh?” he says when Jonny finally comes out.

Jonny does a double take. “You’re remembering more stuff?”

“Seems like it,” Patrick says—kind of distractedly, because Jonny isn’t reacting the way he’d expect him to. He doesn’t look excited or anything, just kind of blank. The next moment, though, he looks left and right and then ducks in to press a quick on Patrick’s mouth.

“Let’s go home,” Jonny says, eyes hot.

***

Jonny takes him apart that night. He puts his mouth over every inch of Patrick’s body until Patrick’s tingling from head to toe and swearing at him to do something, and then Jonny rims him until Patrick’s sobbing into the pillow. When Jonny fucks him, after, it feels bigger than it did earlier today, like Jonny’s determined to make this one count. Patrick gets the feeling: he’s not thrilled about Jonny flying away from him tomorrow, either.

Patrick’s body is buzzing when he goes to sleep. When he wakes up, though, he’s tense, like anxiety has seeped into his body during the night. He wishes he could remember what he dreamed about.

Jonny stirs next to him. His mouth looks soft and warm, and Patrick kisses him until the knot in his belly eases away.

“Morning sex,” Jonny murmurs, breaking the kiss.

“Morning _practice,_ ” Patrick says, even though morning sex sounds pretty great right now. He gives Jonny another kiss and then tries to get up, but Jonny tightens his hand in his hair and whines. “Seriously?” Patrick says, half-laughing.

“We can be fast,” Jonny says.

“Not based on recent evidence,” Patrick says. “Come on,” he says, laughing at Jonny’s petulant expression, which he’s pretty sure is at least partly put on. No way is Jonny actually willing to be late for practice. “Plenty of time for that later.”

“Yeah, while this lasts,” Jonny says, and Patrick pulls back hard enough that Jonny’s hand comes out of his hair.

“What?” he says, suddenly cold.

Jonny’s looking up at him with startled eyes, like he didn’t mean to say that. “Nothing.”

“No, you said—”

“It’s just—we’re leaving for a road trip today,” Jonny says.

“That wasn’t what you meant,” Patrick says. He’s breathing fast now from more than their kisses, and he’s sure that’s not what Jonny meant. “Jonny. What did you mean?”

Jonny drops his eyes. “This isn’t gonna,” he says. “I mean, we aren’t gonna just…”

“We’re soulmates.” The knot in Patrick’s belly is back, ten times bigger than before. “You know that.”

“Then we’re the only male soulmates in the NHL,” Jonny snaps, and Patrick pulls back far enough to sit up.

“Do you seriously, like—do you actually fucking care about that?” he asks.

“It’s not that I—” Jonny swallows the rest of his words and looks up at Patrick helplessly. “Do you really not?”

“No,” Patrick says firmly. Urgently. “Of course I don’t. You’re my…” He trails off, rubbing his fingers over his wrist cover. “It’s not just that. I told you. I knew it, the first moment I saw you.”

“The first moment you remember seeing me,” Jonny says.

“Which means it was there before,” Patrick says. “Jonny. I don’t know what else to say to make you believe—”

Jonny sits up next to him. Presses his forehead against Patrick’s, puts his arms around him, and kisses him, shaky but good. Patrick might not remember, but he can trust what he feels here, when Jonny’s hands are on his body. He knows Jonny wants this. Maybe even as much as Patrick does.

“I wish I had my memory back,” Patrick says. “So you’d believe this is real.”

“I do believe you,” Jonny says, his breath hot and unsteady against Patrick’s cheek. “It’s just—I’m sorry. I do,” he says again, and Patrick holds onto him as tight as he can.

***

It sucks, having to separate for practice. They’re both conscious of the flight to Columbus this afternoon, the one Patrick won’t be on. They’re as clingy in the locker room as they can get away with—maybe a little more than they can get away with, to judge by the grins and nudges around them. But whatever. Half these guys saw Patrick kiss Jonny in a bar a few nights ago. Can’t get much worse than that.

It’s better at lunch, when they can tangle their legs together under the table while they eat their salad bowls. Patrick doesn’t want to leave Jonny with any questions when he gets on that plane. He’s felt like that a lot himself the past few days—not sure of where he stands with anything—and he doesn’t want that for Jonny. He wraps his ankle around Jonny’s and leaves it there, pressed firm.

They’re just clearing their trash when Patrick realizes the street they’re on is Merritt. “Oh,” he says aloud, and then Jonny looks a question at him, and he has to explain.

He shouldn’t feel hesitant about explaining. But it’s such a weird thing, this meeting he arranged, and Jonny already feels weird about things between them, and…

And Patrick doesn’t actually have any good reason not to tell him. “You remember that guy I was meeting, Trav?” he says. “It seems like I was going to buy something off him, and there’s a contact address around here. I figured I’d check it out later.”

Jonny wipes his mouth. “Yeah, okay, let’s go.”

“I didn’t mean—” Patrick doesn’t have any reason why not. “You have a flight.”

“Not for a couple of hours. And we’re already here.” Jonny’s expression falters. “Unless—I mean, we obviously don’t have to if you—”

“No, it’s fine,” Patrick says, though he’s not sure if it is. He wants it to be. That’ll have to be enough.

They drive over to Birch and find parking a couple of blocks away. It’s not the best neighborhood: shabby row houses and little run-down convenience stores, the kind that always smell like cigarette smoke. “You said it was this intersection?” Jonny says when they get there.

“Yeah.” Patrick’s not seeing any obvious candidates. Two of the corners looks residential. Another is a coffee shop. Any of those could be places to meet someone, but Ryan thought Patrick would learn something here, so it’s probably not those. The fourth one is a barber shop, which…Patrick’s not sure what he’d be supposed to learn at a barber shop.

“Maybe you were finally gonna do something about this,” Jonny says, ruffling Patrick’s hair and running a thumb along the deep V of his receding hairline.

“Shut the fuck up, like you don’t need it, too,” Patrick says, bumping his shoulder.

He doesn’t think he’d get his hair cut at a place that looks so sketchy, anyway. Definitely not for four thousand dollars. Maybe he really did want to fix his receding hairline, and they were offering some experimental new treatment? That seems kind of dumb, but…

“Patrick,” Jonny says in a different kind of voice. He’s wandered over to the other side of the barber shop, and when Patrick joins him, he can see another little shop wedged in there. It also has neon signs, and the pictures in the window are all people with tattoos.

“Tattoos,” he says. “Why would I want to get a—”

Jonny makes a noise. Patrick looks over to see that he’s staring at small sign in the window: _Removals and coverups offered._

Patrick stares at it, too. He knows what Jonny’s thinking; it’s what everyone thinks, when they think of tattoo removals. “It couldn’t be that,” he says slowly. “That’s illegal, why would I—”

But he cuts off, because he’s having a flash, like he did with the goal last night. A flash of Ryan, on the phone. Giving him Trav’s number. Not giving him the address directly, because shops got shut down all the time, for doing what Patrick was asking for.

Soulmark removal.

Patrick looks at Jonny. Jonny’s already there, obviously. He got there before Patrick did. He looks up and meets Patrick’s eye, and Patrick can tell he’s reading the truth of it.

“Jonny,” Patrick says desperately, though he’s not sure how he’s going to follow it up. “Jonny, it’s not—”

“I have to go,” Jonny says, and turns and walks away, as fast as possible.


	4. Chapter 4

Patrick wants to follow Jonny except he can’t breathe. He can barely think for how fast the memories are crowding into his head. Stammering, on his first phone call with Ryan. Telling him the name of the NTDP buddy who’d referred him and feeling the whole time like someone was about to arrest him. Then, at Rockit, jiggling his leg and talking too loudly when he said he had to get up to use the bathroom. Sneaking into the back hallway, heart racing like crazy, wanting to turn back but going anyway because he couldn’t see any other way forward. Couldn’t see any other way to escape…

He has to find Jonny. Has to catch him.

Patrick’s breathing hard when he gets back to where they left the Hummer—sprinting; that’s probably not on the trainers’ plan for him—and he’s surprised when it’s still here: awkwardly parked because Jonny doesn’t know how to handle it on the streets of Chicago. Jonny still has the keys. Patrick can’t even get inside.

He leans against the outside to wait, twisting his jacket in his fingers and calling Jonny every three minutes. When fifteen minutes have gone by, he gives up and calls an Uber to take him back to his condo.

The Uber is slower than Patrick wants it to be. Jonny has a flight to catch; he won’t stick around long. If Patrick wants to catch him, it has to be now.

“Jonny?” he calls as soon as lets himself into his condo. “Jonny?”

There’s no answer. Patrick goes into the kitchen, hoping against hope, but the first thing he sees is the piece of paper on the kitchen island. _Don’t call me,_ it says, in the same handwriting that’s on Patrick’s wrist. On top of it are two sets of keys: the ones to Patrick’s Hummer, and the ones to his condo.

Patrick falls back against the wall.

***

As soon as he manages to stop freaking out, he calls Sharpy.

“Yeah, yeah, always your errand boy,” Sharpy says, but he does go to find Jonny. There’s silence on the call for a couple of minutes, and then, “Sorry, Peeks, looks like the Cap is not taking your calls right now.”

Patrick breathes out—not a sob, not a sob, just a normal breath. “Can you tell him it’s really—”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think you’re getting through on this one,” Sharpy says.

Fuck. _Fuck._ “Okay. Can you just tell him…tell him it’s not what I want, and he should call me?”

Sharpy sighs noisily. “Yes, Peeks, I will pass him your note,” he says, and he sounds annoyed, but that doesn’t mean is is, exactly. Patrick’s remembering more now. The way Sharpy teases, and the affection he means by it.

The way he used to tease Patrick and Jonny, when they first made the team, going on about how good their chemistry was together. The way it made Patrick’s back stiff with tension and his laugh too loud.

“Thanks anyway,” he says to Sharpy. Then he calls another Uber back to his car.

It’s hard to pay attention on the drive back to his condo. The memories are crowding into his head and making him miss his turns. He remembers, now, refusing to tell anyone in his family about his soulmate. Having shouting matches when they asked who she was, then going to bed and lying in awake for hours picturing horrifying scenarios where his wrist protector would break, or someone would grab it off of him, or they’d come in and peek while he was asleep. It was illegal to look at someone’s soulmark without their permission, but the damage would already be done. They would know that the name on Patrick’s wrist wasn’t a girl at all.

Then he went to World Juniors and met Jonathan Toews, scoring shootout goals and dominating the ice, and it felt like his secret was being shouted to the rafters.

Patrick can’t believe he forgot that week. It was the most terrifying of his life. It felt like Jonny was chasing him the whole time, showing up wherever Patrick was and looking like—well. Thirteen-year-old Jonny had never made him feel like that. Like his stomach was made of heat and he could hardly breathe and he wanted to cut the mark off his wrist because it felt like the only way to escape it.

Seven years later, after the second Cup win and everything that followed it, Patrick figured out exactly how to do that.

Patrick’s hands are shaking as he turns onto a street he doesn’t recognize. A hallway in the back of a bar. A guy giving him the address of a shop, then demanding the rest of the four grand right away, more than Patrick had on him. The guy trying to walk away with the two grand and the address; Patrick trying to stop him. The two of them scuffling, and Patrick’s head hitting the concrete.

Patrick going back out to the bar and kissing Jonny on the mouth. Forgetting to be afraid.

He stops at the end of a street, shaky and sick. He punches at the GPS. He has to get to the airport.

***

He doesn’t have his replacement driver’s license yet, so they won’t rent him a car. He has to take a cab to the hotel in Columbus, and by the time he gets there, the team’s been on the ground for hours.

They pull up to the entrance, and Patrick realizes he has no idea what to do.

He doesn’t remember ever having been here before. He must have been; Brisson promised this was the hotel the team always stayed at in Columbus. But Patrick doesn’t recognize it. Doesn’t know what floor the team is on. Doesn’t know where to start.

“You wanted the Hyatt, right?” the cabbie says, and Patrick shakes himself and pays him and gets out.

Sharpy doesn’t answer his phone when Patrick calls. Well, okay. Patrick’s here; there has to be some way to make this work. He’ll just…he’ll go inside. He’ll wait for someone familiar to walk by. He hopes it’s not someone on management—though he has a flash of the Bowman family sitting around the dinner table, a meal in front of them and smiles for Patrick, and he thinks that maybe Stan wouldn’t be so bad a choice. Maybe he could even call him and not get yelled at for flying to Columbus when he’s supposed to be recovering from a head injury. Or maybe not—but it might have a better chance of working than just lingering in the lobby like a creeper, waiting for people who might not even leave their rooms tonight.

He goes into the lobby, pulling out his phone to call Stan, and stops, because the whole team is pouring out of the elevators. 

They don’t notice him right away. Someone near the front is shouting—Shawzy. “Saader wants to get sushi!” he’s saying, and Saader’s next to him, elbowing him like he wants to tell him to lower his voice. Sharpy gets Shawzy by the scruff of his neck and shakes him a little, all of them laughing. Then they see Patrick and stop.

“Well, you’re not in Chicago,” Sharpy says.

“Pretty much not,” Patrick says, not looking at him, because he’s just spotted Jonny.

Jonny’s at the back of the crowd. He’s staring at Patrick, jaw a little bit open. Some of the other guys say some stuff, but Patrick doesn’t hear it. He’s just…even when everything’s fucked up between them and it’s Patrick’s fault and Jonny might never speak to him again, seeing Jonny is so _good_. Good like breathing fresh air after being cooped up in an airplane cabin. Good like the first game of the playoffs: exhilarating and terrifying, and Patrick isn’t sure if he can rise to the challenge.

“Um,” he says. “Can we talk?”

Jonny just keeps staring, like he’s had an aneurysm or something. Patrick feels the fear start to claw its way into his throat—Jonny could say no; what if Jonny says no?—but finally Jonny twitches and says, “Yeah. Okay.”

Thank fuck. Some of the guys are saying stuff again—Seabs is definitely saying something dickish—but Patrick isn’t paying attention to them. Jonny’s turning back to the elevators, and Patrick follows.

The elevator ride is silent and awkward. Patrick thinks about saying…he’s not sure what he’d say. It’s not the kind of conversation he wants to start in an elevator. But he feels like he should say something. Jonny’s right there, and Patrick can almost feel a physical barrier between them. Like Jonny’s giving off “don’t touch me” vibes so strongly they’re palpable.

They get down the hall into Jonny’s room, and Jonny shuts the door behind them, and then he says, “All right, what the fuck are you doing here?”

His voice is sharper than Patrick remembers ever hearing it before. “Um,” Patrick says, and by the time he thinks of something else to say, Jonny’s at the other end of the room, with his arms crossed and his back to Patrick. Like he needs to be as far away as possible. “I wanted to talk to you. I know you said not to, but—”

“Fucking right I did,” Jonny says.

“But—look,” Patrick says. He’s starting to breathe too hard, which is super not helpful. “The stuff I said this morning. I mean it. I want—”

“That’s great,” Jonny snaps, “except that last week you tried to take me off your fucking wrist.”

Fuck. It’s so hard to know what to say. “I’m sorry,” Patrick says. “I know that’s not enough, but—it was dumb and horrible of me and I shouldn’t have done it. I _don’t_ want to do it.”

“Yeah, but you will,” Jonny says, voice cracking.

“I won’t,” Patrick says. “Because I remember.”

Jonny shoots him a swift look, surprised. Then, “Bullshit,” he says.

“I do,” Patrick says. “I remember…why I wanted to do it in the first place. I remember what happened after the Cup.”

Jonny looks away.

“I remember the party at Roof,” Patrick says.

“Yeah?” Jonny says, voice tight. “What happened at the party at Roof?”

“You followed me home,” Patrick says. He knows Jonny doesn’t really need to be told; he obviously remembers, just as well as Patrick does. Patrick can still feel it: the heat of Jonny’s hand as it slid around his waist. The energy of the night, both of them hopped up on champagne and the feel of the Cup in their arms. Jonny’s face, so close to his, champagne-flavored breath skating across his lips, and then, for just a moment, closer—the taste of that breath in his mouth, for as long as Patrick would let himself— “You kissed me.”

Jonny’s looking down, at the ugly ornamental baseboard. “Yeah, and you made it pretty clear how you felt about that.”

“I was scared,” Patrick says. He remembers that, too: shouting at Jonny, calling him a faggot, telling him to get out of his space. Running to the bathroom and retching until there was nothing left to bring up. “I was so dumb. I couldn’t handle it.”

“Well, congrats,” Jonny says. His arms are still crossed tightly against his chest. “You do remember.”

“I was an idiot,” Patrick says. “I didn’t understand—” _What it was like to hold you in my arms. What it was like not to be afraid._ “I don’t want to go back to that. I’m not going to.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Jonny says.

“ _Everything_ has—” Patrick takes a step forward. “How can you say nothing’s changed?”

Jonny meets his eyes, and it’s horrible and wonderful, how much Patrick can see there. “There still aren’t any out players in the NHL.”

Patrick lets out a laugh that might be a little hysterical. “Jonny. Last week I kissed you in front of half our teammates in a bar. I’m not saying that was a great call or anything, but—that would have scared me so badly before, and now, when I think about the biggest things that happened in the last week—it’s nothing. Nothing.”

Jonny’s jaw firms up, and he gives Patrick his challenging-captain look. “So you’re not afraid anymore.”

“I—” Patrick closes his mouth. He doesn’t want to lie. Not after everything else. “I’m not gonna say I’m not afraid,” he says slowly. “But that’s not the biggest thing I’m afraid of anymore. Not even close.”

“And what is?” Jonny asks.

“Fuck’s sake, don’t make me say it,” Patrick says. He kicks at the carpet a little. “I—I woke up next to you twice, you idiot, and and now it turns out I fucked up so badly I might never get to do that again, and you want to know what scares me the most?”

Jonny looks at him for a minute, and then he looks away, jaw ticking. “I was afraid, too, you know,” he says in a low voice. “I thought my name was a mistake when I first got it. But then I met you, and I knew it wasn’t, but you—”

Patrick remembers the first and only time Jonny asked him about his name. It was their first year, and they were alone in Seabs’ living room. Jonny was jumpy the whole afternoon, couldn’t sit still, and when he finally did sit down he looked over with the softest look on his face. Then he reached out a hand to Patrick’s wrist and asked—

Patrick remembers that moment really well for something he’s tried so hard not to think about over the years.

“I shouldn’t have laughed at you like that,” Patrick says.

“No,” Jonny says, turning that stubborn look on Patrick again. “You shouldn’t have.”

Fuck. Patrick’s ruined a lot more than his own physical health over the years, letting himself be too afraid of his name. 

“I want to make it up to you,” Patrick says. “How can I make it up to you?”

Jonny’s expression shifts, still stubborn, but there’s something else there, too. “You can never fucking leave me again,” he says, and Patrick wants to laugh.

It’s so fucking easy. It’s the absolute easiest thing Jonny could have asked for. “Done,” he says. “I’ll never. That’s—I mean, yeah. Obviously. If you’ll let me—yeah.”

Jonny looks at him for another moment, lips pressed together and the stubborn look still in his eyes. Then he goes for the guard on his wrist.

Patrick hasn’t seen this yet. Jonny left his wrist guard on every time they had sex, distracted Patrick anytime he went near it. Maybe Patrick should have thought about what that meant. Now Jonny loosens the buckles that are meant to keep it on tight, and Patrick drifts closer, so that he’s there to touch the pale skin underneath as Jonny slides it off.

There’s a sharp line where Jonny’s tan stops, and little red marks where the guard was digging into his skin. On the smooth white skin in between, in familiar cramped handwriting, is Patrick’s name.

Patrick presses his lips to it. It smells like plastic of the guard, and it tastes like Jonny.

Jonny cups his hand around the back of Patrick’s head as he traces Jonny’s veins with his tongue. “I’ve thought about this so many times,” Jonny says shakily. “But you never—”

“I’m so sorry,” Patrick whispers. He raises his head and buries his nose in the crook of Jonny’s neck. Jonny’s arms come up around him, both wrists pressed against Patrick’s back, and they breathe together while Patrick feels all the tension of the long afternoon and evening drain from his muscles.

“I wanted you, too,” Patrick says.

Jonny’s arms tighten. “Yeah?”

“Fucking World Juniors, man,” Patrick says into his neck. “Jerked off so much that week.”

Jonny laughs like it’s been surprised out of him. “Yeah?” he says again, pulling back so Patrick can see the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t get a big head about it or anything,” Patrick says, but Jonny moves his hips against Patrick’s and then Patrick has to regret his double entendre.

On second thought, no. He really doesn’t.

It feels different when they undress each other this time. Jonny lingers over Patrick’s wrist, the stark lines of his name against white skin, and Patrick can feel the satisfaction of it humming through them both. This is a real thing now, not them hiding or stealing time. This is for keeps.

He gets to keep the way Jonny cries out when Patrick bites up his chest, the way he goes slick with sweat when Patrick grinds their cocks together. The way Jonny holds onto him like he’ll never let go. They don’t try for anything fancy: it’s too important to keep their hands on each other, to keep breathing the same air. Patrick wants to swallow every groan Jonny makes.

He could have had this years ago. Then again, maybe he couldn’t: he’s not sure he could have pushed through the fear by himself. It was threaded so strongly through him, choking off any other thoughts before they could form. It’s still there now. But it feels smaller than the way his blood fizzes when Jonny moves against him, or the way his heart swells at Jonny’s mouth on his. He’s going to have to come out to his family and his coach and his team and that’s terrifying and could go so badly, but those thoughts slip away with Jonny’s hands on his skin. With Jonny’s breath picking up and his hips jerking against Patrick.

“Fucking—Patrick,” Jonny grinds out, and Patrick doesn’t have the breath to respond, because Jonny’s cock is spilling against his stomach and Patrick needs to come _right now._

He feels too good to move afterward. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to. He can stay like this, in Jonny’s arms, for as long as he wants to. Years, even. Maybe their whole lives.

He really should send Trav a thank-you card.

***

The next morning, Patrick goes down to team breakfast with Jonny, holding his hand.

This was Patrick’s nightmare for so many years: being with a guy, with Jonny, where someone could see. That terror isn’t gone. Patrick’s nerves are still shocky with it; his wrist is clammy where the wrist protector usually is, and he keeps fighting the urge to hide it. But he doesn’t. He presses his wrist against Jonny’s instead.

Most of the team is already there. Patrick doesn’t have a full set of memories yet—spent some time on the phone with his doctor and then his mom this morning, trying to catalog what he does have and what he doesn’t—but the faces of the team feel familiar the way they haven’t for the past week. He knows these people. He doesn’t know if he can trust them with his hand in Jonny’s, but he’s willing to take the risk. He has to—he’s lived through the alternative.

A few people look up as they come in. There are some double takes, and then more people look, elbowed by their neighbors. Not all of the faces are friendly. But there’s Sharpy smirking at them, and Seabs smiling, and Duncs doing a little head-shrug like _yeah, okay_ before going back to his omelet.

Jonny squeezes his hand, and when Patrick looks over, Jonny’s giving him this soft look, nothing like the quelling glare he was giving the table a minute ago. Patrick grins back at him and bumps their shoulders together.

“Ewwwww,” Shawzy says as they go to sit across from him, and Patrick panics a little before Shawzy adds: “It’s like watching your mom and dad.”

Patrick laughs, a little abruptly. “Please. I’m way hotter than your mom.”

“Hey now,” Shawzy says, and Saader moves over so that Patrick and Jonny can sit next to each other.

“Be good,” Patrick says, “or we’ll start making out in front of you,” and Shawzy gags and Jonny fails to hide his smirk.

“Don’t make me come down there!” Sharpy calls, and Crow passes them the salt and pepper, and if this was what Patrick was afraid of—well. He’ll take it every time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to formally apologize for the relative lack of smut in this story. I promise to amend my ways in the future.


End file.
